Muddy and low saturated prints and film scans

[bretcurry]

My dad keeps on using Kodak 200 Gold with his Canon SLR. I think the results are terrible. Here are some pictures. Are these underexposed? It looks too muddy and low saturated to me. And we get these results with the film scanner and the prints developed by snapfish and kodakgallery.

I want bright, crisp, saturated photos. I can't get him to switch to 400 because of the grain. Now I expect all kodak films are like this. Looking at flicker, fujifilm looks much better in a sense. Fuji seems gray, not brown, at least when the lighting isn't "picture perfect" and to me thats an improvement because I can't stand to this brown haze anymore. Please help, and possibly explain this phenomenon. Thanks.
-Bret

 

[J. Borger]

What's there to explain ... i find these colors very pleasant.
I hate saturated colors like Velvia.
Morale: it is a matter of taste!

 

[titrisol]

Those seem fine to me.
However try to convince him to use the +.5 exp.comp
or just use 200 film as 160 or 125.

That'll take care of the saturation (overexposing in negative, underexposing in slide)

 

[jaapv]

Maybe he should switch to a rangefinder camera...😉

 

[rich815]

Gold 200 is a fine film. I like it a lot. Who does your processing? Who is scanning the negs? The photos you show are not as bad as you make them sound, IMO, but you might try another processor/printer or post-scan work flow and see if you can get better color and saturation. Attached are some of my Gold 200 shots.

 

[Jamie123]

If you don't like it just try a roll of another film. I like the Kodak Portra line but if you want to try Fuji and want saturated colors then I'd suggest to try Fuji Pro160C.

 

[Pherdinand]

make him use fuji reala100. It's the highest colour saturation colour neg in my experience. Or make him use slide film.
I don't like gold200 myself. But the images you posted are fine. I don't know what more saturated colours you expect from people in the shadow.
You can increase saturation by scanning. Depends on the scanner too, but it is possible.

 

[ZorkiKat]

Are you scanning the negatives yourself? Bear in mind that scans from film (negatives worse, transparencies slightly better) will always tend to be lower in quality: contrast, colour, and sharpness will always be wanting. This is inherent in the system. Even scans from labs made with industrial type software will often be just slightly better.

You would have to work on the scanned material using photo-editing software to achieve the results (snappy colours, sharp contours, &c) that you want. This by no means should be construed as "cheating"- its just done to restore what was really in the original negative. All the information for desireable qualities like saturated hues are there in the negative. It's just that the scanning hardware and software cannot interpret them and translate them to values which human eyes can appreciate.

 

[dmr]

If he likes Kodak film, you might suggest he try UC 400 if he wants a bit more "pop" to the colors. It shouldn't be too grainy if you stick to 8x10 and smaller.

Kodak Gold 200 is my second choice for a 200 film (after Fuji and before Walgreens/Agfa) and it always gives me great saturation. It can be vivid, but not gaudy. Of your photos above, the saturation looks good (to me) in 1 and 3, but 2 is very contrasty and dominated by the bright window light -- loss of detail on the faces. Colors seem to be either washed out or buried in the shadows. On 3, the skin tone seems somewhat ruddy to me, but that may be the scan or the monitor here.

 

[kmack]

Which Canon lens is being used?
Some of the Canon SLR lenses are not that great (the standard FD 50/1.8 for instance).

The shots you posted look very much like the results I get from some of my Canon SLR lenses.

 

[Bryce]

Also on the lens note, not using a shade can give a washed out look, and complex zoom lenses often cost you in contrast.
I'd agree that the pictures look O.K., though. If you really want more contrast and saturation, a slide film may be your best bet. For general use and especially people shots, I used to use Astia or Sensia; these films give relatively low saturation by slide film standards and handle subtle colors like nothing else. And of course the saturation and contrast are much greater than any print film.
You could try a "high saturation" print film, like Kodak's VC series films. I haven't been happy with their ability to record skin tones, and I'm colorblind... YMMV.

 

[smileyguy]

Your pics look fine to me, Bret. I'm no pro but I haven't had any issue with the Kodak 200 Gold in my Canon SLR. It is a little warmer than some films I've tried but not in a huge way.

If you're doing the scanning yourself on this film you might want to let your scanner warm up a bit before scanning and make sure that profiles match between scanner and monitor. I wrestled with this issue for the longest time before I got everything working right. I honestly wondered about the quality of my scanner/computer when EVERYTHING was coming out way underexposed after scanning. Once I let the light warm up and made sure to match profiles and do the "calibration" thing in the scanner driver, things were much better.

As far as a better film than the Kodak Gold 200, I use Fuji films most of the time and have been very happy with the NPS 160. Nice fine grain and beautiful colours.

 

[Film dino]

Gold 200

Gold 200

Gold 200 is intolerant of under exposure, but the shots you posted dont look underexposed . I used to use Gold 200 (up to version 5) quite a lot & in direct light its quite saturated- no Photoshopping (except USM) on the attached shot. You're right about the grain in Gold 400.
M2, 35mm about 5.6 i think

 

[bretcurry]

Photos Fixed

Photos Fixed

Well dabbling in photoshop I found a way to make these photos pop a little more in the direction I want them to. I create a duplicate layer and set the blending mode to soft light. Here are some examples that show before and after on the same picture. I can adjust the amount of this effect by controlling the opacity of the layer.